Why these electric cargo bikes are 10x faster than delivery vans in a city

Electric bicycles are quickly becoming a preferred method of transportation and delivery by courier companies in cities that are replacing traditional delivery vans.

In crowded urban environments, electric bikes are an efficient and nimble alternative to traditional delivery vans.

Their compact size allows e-bike couriers to navigate congested streets and narrow lanes with ease, avoiding the frequent gridlock traffic that larger vehicles often get trapped in.

E-bikes can also be parked almost anywhere, eliminating the time-consuming search for sufficiently large parking spaces, which is often a challenge for vans in densely populated areas.

Additionally, with dedicated bike lanes becoming more prevalent in many cities, e-bikes often have direct routes inaccessible to larger vehicles.

One of the latest examples of e-bikes as a delivery van alternative comes to us from Man Maid, a British handyman service that delivers at-home services for carpentry, plumbing and other home fixes.

The company’s founder Mungo Morgan explained to Road.cc that after spending long periods of time stuck in traffic while driving a work van, he was seeking a better way to get around the city.

Now that the company has switched to a fleet of electric cargo bikes, they can reach clients faster and include more stops in a day.

As Morgan explained, “with the heavy traffic and the congestion during rush hour, we’re 10 times quicker than a van would be”.

The company also now saves around £7,000 a year (approximately US $8,500) in parking tickets that they used to rack up with their vans, Morgan added.

Man Maid is just one of countless companies who have found that e-cargo bikes are much quicker at making urban deliveries than larger vans.

In fact, for some companies it goes one level deeper. Stockholm-based Vassla, an e-bike and e-scooter manufacturer, found that it could make significantly more deliveries of its electric bikes when it delivered them by… electric cargo bike.

The company switched over in Paris and drastically improved its delivery numbers, showing that even e-bikes can be delivered faster by e-bike.